Tracey Tawhiao

 In art, I have to make another blog post on Tracey Tawhiao. This one is about how she uses space, color, and objects in her work. 

The first thing I had to do was a thumbnail sketch. 

thumbnail and original

The objects she uses to make the artwork are pieces of newspaper, acrylic paints, and a canvas. the objects she uses in the artwork are fish. she has also kept a picture of a kiwi, and the word 'Inside' from the newspapers underneath the paint.

There is also not a lot of free space in the painting. It is mostly taken up by fish though the fish are only line art, so you could say the space in the fish counts. She has also filled each fish with triangle designs and one with Maori designs. 

She also uses only a handful of colors. This helps to not keep the painting too busy, and keep it easy on the eyes. The red color is bright and helps to grab the eye. 

I think that is all I need to do here. =)

Tracey Tawhiao subversion

Our current objective in art is to research and learn about subversion in the art using methods like thumbnail sketches.

One of our objectives is to take notes from the following website:

Art is meant to subvert.

My notes are confusing so I will simply them. 

Art is supposed to challenge the art constructs and make people think and question things. However, some people do not appreciate having their views challenged and so they get angry

If art does not challenge them tough, they will get bored of your art. 

Another task we had to do was to make thumbnail sketches of Tracey Tawhiao's work.

  The thumbnail next to the actual painting. 

Thumbnail versus actual artwork

Within Tracey's work, the act of subversion is shown in the process of painting over a newspaper written in English. Tracey is a Maori artist so by doing this it is almost as if she is trying to cover up the English part of New Zealand. She doesn't make much of an attempt to hide the fact that she is doing it over something is that sometimes she'll let things like words show through. When she paints she uses Maori patterns as if to say that the country should belong to the Maori more than the British. Newspaper is also not really a permanent canvas and is not designed to be painted on.

Another task we had to do was to describe an artwork that she did

In this artwork, (Called Amazon) she did a lot of fish, of varying sizes and shapes. The rounder fish look slightly like targets which might refer to the fish being targeted/hunted. She has kept the word Amazon and a picture of what I assume is the Amazon. she has used a lot of blue in the artwork which might relate to water. 

I think that is all. If not.... well... whoops